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I’m happily relaying the awesome news that the 2008 NOLOSE Conference is officially set for 9/26-9/28 in Northampton, MA (details below).

It’s awesome because it’s NOLOSE, and awesome because – yes! – it’s in Massachusetts, and everything else this year has been, as far as I’m concerned, in the middle of freaking nowhere (Los Angeles and Chicago and San Francisco…).

The date has been set! Mark your calendars for NOLOSE ’08: September 26th through the 28th (Friday-Sunday). Meet us by the pool at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center in Northampton, Massachusetts for a weekend packed with fattastic fun, food, friends and other good stuff!

We’re all hard at work, planning to make this year’s conference the best ever! There are a lot of exciting things in the works. The Clarion has charm, a great location and a staff that is already excited to hang out with all of us. As always, choosing a venue was no easy feat. We have a very diverse population and we have lots of factors to take into consideration. All in all, we are pretty psyched about the Clarion, and we are sure most of you will be too.

Keep your eyes open for more detailed information about the conference as it becomes available and, as always, if you have some ideas about what you’d like to see at NOLOSE this year, let us know! Expect to see a call for workshops in the very near future, because that’s how we roll.

For more information about NOLOSE and to keep up with the calendar and new information about the upcoming conference, please visit nolose.org.

NOLOSE is a volunteer- run organization dedicated to ending the oppression of fat people and creating vibrant fat queer culture. NOLOSE started out as the National Organizations for Lesbians of SizE. As the years passed and the organization grew, we changed our mission to include not only a broader community of queer women—dykes, lesbians and bisexual women—but also transgendered people.

NOLOSE and the annual NOLOSE Conference are explicitly trans-inclusive. We want to make it clear that NOLOSE invites all fat queer women, all fat trans and gender-variant folks and our allies to participate.

Last Friday, I had a post all ready to go, riffing on this story about Barack Obama addressing “a mostly African-American crowd” and chiding them for making their children fat. Apparently the crowd cheered wildly when Obama told them to “shape up, turn off the TV, help their kids with their homework and stop letting them grow fat eating Popeye’s chicken for breakfast.” Read the rest of this entry »

Wonder why all this Good Fatty/Bad Fatty talk of late actually means something other than nonstop self-referential wankery? I direct you to my personal AAAAAAAAAAAAAA! of the day, a New York Times story about food writers who, after a life of what could only be called nonstop bingeing, have had second thoughts about their Bad Fatty lifestyles and are now on diets. Read the rest of this entry »

My XH has a rare genetic disease, one that caused him to overstore iron in his body until it damaged his liver and pancreas to the point where he contracted both diabetes and cirrhosis by his early 30s. During the course of his initial treatment, he was also given a diet sheet. Guess what was the number one thing was on the list that they told him was a must to avoid? Leafy green vegetables. Yes, that’s right. He has to stay away from spinach and all forms of lettuce like they’re poison ivy. Poor guy. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve been up since 5 a.m. You just slogged through 10 hours of work and 2 hours of commuting, then a couple of after-work errands and if anyone even so much as utters the word “exercise” in your presence you swear you’re gonna sit on ’em after you’ve been running around all day, even if most of the “running” has been done in a seated position. But you’ll settle for sitting on the couch and eating that bucket of KFC on your front seat. Chicken, starch, starch, starch, soda, pie, and not a green veggie to be found anywhere. Maybe there’s fruit in the pie tonight, maybe not. But soda, oh, you bet, and not that diet crap either. As much as you want — hey, that chicken is salty, and the gravy on those mashed potatoes just sticks to the roof of your mouth without a couple slugs of Dr. Pepper. You know beer is healthier for you, but come on, it just doesn’t go with KFC.* No cooking, no more responsibilities, just pure vegging out in front of the tube until it’s time for bed. Ahhhhh. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, my dad was interviewed for a Big Deal National Publication, for a story they were doing on real estate in the area where he lives. He emailed me to tell me the exciting news, and right then and there I could have told him my great news, about FatFu (the blog) getting mentioned in a BDNP also. Not that that was my doing at all, of course, they were merely referencing the brilliant work of my brilliant coblogger (OK, Fu, I’ll stop now, I promise), and I was merely along for the ride. But at least they didn’t say, “Except for the work of Meowser, which is completely inane and should be ignored at all costs,” so I’ll take it. Yet I could not bring myself to tell him. The words got stuck in my throat. Fingers. Something. Read the rest of this entry »